Hi everybody,
what tool for looking up vocabulary do you use? Got /www.perseus.tufts.edu, but I find it rather slow.
Especially I am interested in free tools that work with linux.
Which commercial tools can you recommend?
Finally, I found that there are free bibel programs around, like sword and bibletime.For what are they used? Looking up vocabulary as well? So, what are the differences to their commercial counterparts?
Thanks in advance Thomas[/url]

Excluding biblical Greek, Perseus is the only computerized vocabulary tool I know of. And I agree it's slow, but I suspect that it has grown slower recently because they have been transferring servers to the new version (which is not the default version yet), which I notice is faster than the old/default Perseus. Mind you, that is like saying an ant is faster than a snail.

Because of the slowness of Perseus generally, I prefer dealing with the printed lexicons. However, in the long run, that has probably improved my Greek since I spend more time looking at the lexicon entry and, in lacking a nice crutch, it makes me remember more of the vocabulary.

I am really disappointed. When I, for example, want to read an english text I fire up my dictionary lookup tool "ding" which uses a textfile database. Mouse on the word, possible matches pop up. As a result I can read nearly any kind of text fluently and I do thatfore learn a lot. Everything is free and so simple.
Now I ask myself for what are they spending billions dollars educational programs, communication, incultural exchange, if the simplest and at the same time most necessary help is a textfile of some 10000, 100000 entries. Oh no, they need to put barriers in the way.It is incredibily a pity.
So, as a cause of such an ignorance they force us to learn modern greek, right?
Searching alphabetically a word in a thick book manually these days is stupid. Considering this even of good use, a couple of levels below that.
So, how about it, I encourage you to pressure on those, whose mere dedication consist of wasting public money, sponsoring the elites with nonsense just because of parocialism. Maybe I should not have written so strong but as I said Ii is really what strikes me down at the moment. Thomas

Actually, I can look up words in a lexicon real fast ... especially in a lexicon I know well (my fingers instinctively reach for the right pages) - and I don't want to be stuck to the computer when studying Greek anyway. I prefer reading away from the whirr of electronics, though I read an eBook on the computer every now and then.